BBC's 'Call the Midwife’ brings back memories

Blood, tears and fainting husbands – the BBC hit series 'Call the Midwife’ has
evoked so many memories for Monica Fitten.

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BBC's 'Call the Midwife' stars Jessica Raine as Jenny Lee, a midwife who works at a convent in East London

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Monica Fitten, 80: she trained to be a midwife in London in 1955

By Monica Fitten and Anna Tyzack

1:17PM GMT 06 Feb 2012

In 1955, when I was a young nurse working in London, I took a pay cut to train as a midwife. Rather like the girls in the current BBC series Call the Midwife, I was more interested in boys than babies at the time, but in those days nurses were expected to be able to deliver a child. And if you didn’t know your midwifery, you were considered no better than a lay person when it came to attending a woman in labour. It was a steep learning curve with little time off but within six months, I’d delivered more babies than I can count, and had become an authority on the subject of child-bearing women – and their husbands.

Birth wasn’t a medical event back then; it was a family occasion conducted on the marital bed. Only women expecting twins or triplets or experiencing complications such as toxaemia ended up in hospital; everyone else just got on with it at home.

I’d spend my days cycling between mothers-to-be in Hammersmith, my allocated district, making sure their homes were suitable for a birth. Most women – or should I say their mothers – would have cleaned the bedroom, but running water and indoor sanitation were still a luxury in those days; many people had outside loos or shared a bathroom with several other flats, which would make my job tricky. In extreme cases – when the surroundings were truly filthy, for example, or if we knew the father was physically abusing the mother – we would send the woman off to the maternity unit to have her baby in clean sheets and peace and quiet.

I never made any attempts to glamorise birth or play down the upheaval a new baby would bring. It was no use euphemistically saying “it’s all in the mind”; I’d warn the expectant mother that it was going to be damned painful. It didn’t always sink in, though. I got used to women kicking up a fuss as they went into the second stage of labour. It’s just human nature. Some of us – myself included – are born with low pain thresholds while others give birth almost effortlessly. Generally, though, pain was an accepted part of childbirth and we’d only administer painkillers – intramuscular pethidine – to women who had ceased to cope entirely or who were giving birth to particularly large babies. If there was tearing down below, I’d stitch it up myself, unless it was extensive, in which case I’d call the GP. Back then doctors were very good at midwifery.

Despite all this, it always surprised me how well most women managed in labour. Often it was what they did afterwards that was more of a worry. It’s a myth that everyone is a natural mother. Just because you want a baby doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at dealing with it when it’s born. I met several mothers who were hopeless to the point of neglect. The responsibility of motherhood just wasn’t for them; they got frightened. Later on, when I was a health visitor, I gave evidence in the juvenile court on three occasions about mothers accused of abusing or neglecting their children.

But you couldn’t really blame these women for getting pregnant. Birth control wasn’t as widely available – or morally accepted – back then. I often helped mothers to have their eighth, ninth or 10th child. These women were dab hands at giving birth. Their mothers would be in the kitchen making tea and minding the other children while their husbands assisted them in labour. Yes, you read that right. Many of the fathers I came across would have made excellent nurses.

This wasn’t always the case, though. I’ll never forget the first time a father stepped in to help me. Just as his child’s head started to appear, he fainted across his wife’s body. I didn’t know what to do – he was too heavy to move – but the mother found it so funny that she ended up laughing the baby out. “I knew he’d do that,” she kept saying. It was instances like this that made home births so much more fun than having a child in a hospital.

Hammersmith in west London wasn’t a posh place in those days. I didn’t always feel safe as I cycled around in the middle of the night but I was lucky not to have many bad experiences. I tended to several women who were in unhappy marriages and a couple who had their mother-in-laws at their throat, and it was normal for fathers to calm their nerves with alcohol while their wife was in labour, but they were never unpleasant to me.

And thankfully I didn’t witness too many tragedies. Women experiencing complications would go straight to hospital. But I did deliver a couple of premature babies who didn’t make it – in those days you could wave goodbye to any child weighing under 5lb.

During births I was supposed to be supervised by a senior midwife but she was always late. I got used to her turning up in time for a cup of tea after the baby was born and I’d finished cleaning up the bedroom but it didn’t bother me; she’d seen it all before, whereas I was just learning. When I told her about the fainting incident she gave me a look of unadulterated scorn. “Typical man,” she said. “A bloody good period would see them off. Men simply don’t do pain.”

Being “on district” was a different world from being in a hospital, largely because senior midwives were a race apart from other nurses. They’d insist our uniforms – blue dresses with short sleeves, a white collar and a small white cap – were immaculate and we’d be severely reprimanded if we ever stepped out of line. We lived in a nurses’ home, which was known as “the virgins’ retreat” (as opposed to the sisters’ homes, which we nicknamed “menopausal mansions”) and if you were lucky, your boyfriend would be waiting for you at the gate when your shift was over. There was a formal sitting room at the front of the house where the home sister would make polite conversation with your suitor while you were getting ready. Then she would see you off the premises, reminding you to be back by 10.30pm at the latest.

But we still had fun; the draconian rules and long working hours didn’t do us any harm. I think all of us trainees realised that there was something very special about delivering a child into the world in its family home. I’m saddened that most girls don’t have their babies at home any more. Yes, birth mortality rates have fallen dramatically since my days as a midwife, but those destined to have a normal labour shouldn’t be forced to go into a hospital where they are exposed to infections and all manner of other traumatic scenarios which have nothing to do with having a baby. Afterwards, they’re out on their ear, feeling pressured to get on with their lives, when a good midwife would tell them to lie in bed for a couple of days and concentrate on feeding their baby.

I passed my midwifery exams but in the end it wasn’t enough for me being a midwife. The girls in the BBC series seem to love delivering babies times and time again, but for me this got boring. I wanted to be part of the development of the child in its formative years, so I went on to become a health visitor, which I did until I retired 20 years ago.

But I’ll never forget my experiences in Hammersmith. They were an education in self discipline and caring for others – all factors that have been forgotten in the codswallop of modern-day nursing. Midwifery – and nursing in general – has become much too academic; young nurses are so busy at the computer on the nurses’ station that they’ve never learnt how to prop up an old lady in bed (a crucial skill given our ageing population; there are, to my knowledge, five women over the age of 100 in my town). If modern-day midwives were left to their own devices like I was, they’d quickly understand that their patient is the most important person in the room. And, more importantly, they’d learn to use their common sense, which is crucial when it comes to delivering a child.

Call The Midwife is on BBC One, 8pm Sundays

Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth is available from Telegraph Books at £7.99 + 99p p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk